‘On the edge of social breakdown’

On the heels of news out of Greece that a 60-year-old man and his 90-year-old mother leaped to their deaths because of financial despair, US news outlet King World News interviewed UKIP Leader Nigel Farage, to get his take on the ongoing tragedy and crisis in Europe.

Farage told KWN that “we are on the edge of total social breakdown” and “the banking system is now in the most perilous state we’ve seen in over 70 years.”

Here is what Farage had to say about the deteriorating situation: “The situation in Greece just goes from bad to worse. We’ve now got a situation where there was the big suicide a few weeks ago, where a 77-year-old man shot himself in the head outside the Greek Parliament. That was the public face of what’s gone wrong.”

Nigel Farage continues:

“But do you know that every day there are people that are literally leaving their children at the doors of the Greek Orthodox Church, with notes around their necks saying, ‘We cannot afford to feed or look after these children, please take them from us.’ Can you imagine that?

“This is taking place inside Europe. This is taking place inside a once great nation. The nation that invented democracy. We are on the edge of total social breakdown. And frankly, as far as the euro is concerned and the austerity measures are concerned, the medicine is killing the patient.

“Yet the remedy that came out of Camp David last week, and is coming out of European meetings in Brussels this week, is we must pursue more of the same. So it is an absolutely desperate situation.

“I was arguing (in Brussels) that we’ve got to break this curse of the euro for the Greeks. We’ve got to allow their currency to devalue to where it should be on the world exchanges, to try and restore human dignity.

“It’s horrible. A Greek pensioner this time last year had an old-age pension income of 600 euros per month. That has now been cut to 400 euros. (This is) at a time of increasing fuel costs and everything else. People simply can’t afford to live. The situation is absolutely dire and something needs to be done.

“Sadly, amongst the Greek political class themselves, we are not seeing the courage and leadership that is necessary. I don’t believe Greece has any future at all inside the euro.

“One of two things will happen. Either there will be some sort of terrible revolution that takes place in the country, or perhaps Germany and the others will expel Greece at some point after their general election. That’s coming up on June the 17th.

“The bigger problem is Spain. I spoke to a very senior and leading economist last week about this. He said, ‘If Spain goes, Europe on their own just will not be big enough to save those banks. It would require a (massive) global solution of some kind.’ But I’m not even sure the will for that exists.

“I mean after all, the Americans and the Canadians, the last time the IMF had a cash call to help the eurozone, said, ‘No, we’re just not going to do this.’ Do we get to the point where we say, ‘We cannot go on bailing out each other and printing money forever.’ And do we actually see a series of big banks going bust?

“I do think that the banking system is now in the most perilous state we’ve seen in over 70 years.”